


Over the River and Through the Woods

by Strawberry_Sweetheart



Series: Forest Spirit Steve [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Carol is a bitch, M/M, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart, billy have a drinking problem but he gets better, but we stan, cuz the hargroves are all fucked, forest spirit barbara, forest spirit steve, slowburn, themes of toxic masculinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-04 02:21:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strawberry_Sweetheart/pseuds/Strawberry_Sweetheart
Summary: Grandpa Hargrove had a decent plot a land that took several acres out of lush forest mountainside, quite a ways apart from from the nearest town of Hawkins, isolated by the walls of pines and a river that shrunk and grew with the seasons. Among the thick foliage, on top of dark fertile earth and a natural underground spring that fed into a well, was a hunting cabin.--Billy occasionally escapes the repetitive small town life style to visit his late grandfather's cabin, away from his dad and his responsibilities to drink alone. Well... maybe not so much "alone"  as he thought when he starts to notice things being moved around.





	Over the River and Through the Woods

Grandpa Hargrove had a decent plot a land that took several acres out of lush forest mountainside, quite a ways apart from from the nearest town, isolated by the walls of pines and a river that shrunk and grew with the seasons. Among the thick foliage, on top of dark fertile earth and a natural underground spring that fed into a well, was a hunting cabin. It stood crooked with age and neglect, the interior dusted and the pipes spurting brown water from rust, but magnificent in its craftsmanship from Grandpa Hargrove despite its small stature and weather worn porch.

Grandpa Hargrove was a rough son of bitch, old in his ways and proud in his manhood, he took to a liquor bottle the same way a newborn takes to milk bottle. He was a man who stood rod straight, head held high, and never developed a hunch even as he entered his later years, militant even upon his death bed; he was buried in a decorated uniform. After he passed, the cabin was located a drives away from the town was inherited by his grandson William “Billy” Hargrove, who refused to sell it for a pretty penny like his father insisted he should do. 

Neil Hargrove was quickly draining the family’s funds in booze and gambling that he was falling behind on house payments. When the late Hargrove passed leaving the cabin to his grandson and his house to his son, Neil switch scenery from sunny california to Indiana to reap the benefits of the inherited paid off mortgage home and lower costs of living. 

The thing was, the description “small town” was something deceptive, Billy thought. There was nothing small about Hawkins. Compared to the California coastline, Hawkins was spacious. The average california home had small yards and tight packed neighborhoods with lines of cars along the sidewalk that made finding a parking space a bitch. Hawkins, on the other hand, with their much smaller population than Long Beach, had homes where the yards were expansive, sometimes blurring and bleeding into the forest. The problem was that there was a whole lot of nothing to fill the space. Billy drove through pockets of space where flat land cleared for farming that went on and on…. Sometimes he drove and drove just to see where the emptiness would stop, searching for something interesting to sate the buzzing of his blood, something to fill the mind numbing quiet of the town.

Sometimes it seemed like the only thing breaking the peacefulwhite noise of the town was his gas guzzling Camaro.

It took only a week or two for him to get bored of the people, always the same faces passing by the halls, the streets lacked the tourism for new bodies. If you’ve been to one party you’ve been to all of them, and Billy hated it. Every goddamn party had the same brand of booze, the same people, the same loud laugh of Miranda that somehow grated through the music, the same hands running down his chest and _grabbing_ at him from desperate girls he fucked before. Sex was the all the same, too.

The girls here would always giggled when he ran his hands up their legs with faux embarrassment and coy eyes. They’d say, “I’ve never done this before”, quiet like they were sharing a secret, and then immediately take him down to the root without a gag of complaint. Fucking guys was the same, it was like there was a script everyone followed. They’d let Billy push them around, they would push back, too. “What are you, gay?” Then he’d always find himself in the locker room alone with some guy who’d call himself “not a faggot” and expect to get a blowjob out of him in return for a limp wrist handie. 

There was all this pent up energy making his skin shrink and tighten, making him feel like a caged animal.

So, tired of the mundane city and tired of the social games, he found himself retreating every weekend or so to the mountain side into the cabin in the forest. He crosses the river bridge, built by the hands of his grandpa, as sturdy as he was, with his tools and his skills cultivated over the years by both his grandpa and his father to fix the kinks and cracks out of the place. Because a man’s man knew how to work with their hands. A real man knows how to go about fixing pipes and work wood, they know how to hunt and skin game, and they keep tradition alive and teach their sons about good whiskey and playing poker. 

The first time he stepped foot in the cabin after his grandpa’s passing, a cold breeze blew through the door from inside the house, gooseflesh covered his neck and arms. The inside still smelled of cigars. The last time he was here was when he was 5 during hunting season. He had sat on his lap, in that big green armchair, as his grandpa taught him how to clean a gun, choked on the cigar smoke that filled his lungs and memorized the weight of a hunting rifle. 

That season, he took Billy out to the woods and taught him to track and stalk his prey, had pressed a gun to his hand, leaning over him with a tobacco musked breath next to his ear, He had wrapped his large calloused hands wrap around his own smaller ones to steady his aim on pretty doe grazing yards away. He saw the doe turn to look their way with large eyes, paralyzed as she noticed them among the brush, and before she could run, his finger pressed down on the trigger. 

The crows took flight like clouds of black smog passing through a light blue sky; the resounding bang shook the trees and the crowds screeched murder. Billy felt his heart beat to the pace of frantic wings from the birds that fled. He had to be carried back to the cabin, crying and wailing. 

The last night he was there, he heard his dad and grandpa talking in the living room. His dad had yelled “it’s that cunt of my wife turning my son into a sissy boy” and his grandpa backhanded his son. 

“That ‘cunt’ is your wife and that’s _your_ son,” he puffed his cigar and rolled it between his fingers, “he gets his feminine nature and emotional outbursts from you. It’s not that wife of yours that’s ruining your son.” 

He hadn’t seen him after that trip until his last few days at the hospital. Billy figured that, in some respects, he had been right. His dad and him are cut from the same cloth, both controlled by their emotions that his grandpa had considered a feminine and shameful sensibility. Maybe, he thought, that was why the cabin was left for him. To get away from his dad, to get away from his influence, and learn to grow up to be a proper man before his youth was over. 

The thought settled something uneasy in his chest, but still he whipped the dust from a black and white framed picture of a younger version of his grandpa with dark hair instead white, who stood with a hand resting on the shoulder of a woman, thin and petite, with the same happy and kind eyes in every picture he’s ever seen of her. He never got to meet her before she passed, but he wishes he could have. She must have been some woman, her name was the only thing that soften his grandpa’s stoicism with a longing kind of softness, the longing that never allowed him to remarry.

He placed the picture back on the desk where it rested, in the tiny space devoid of dust from where it sat for so many years, and wondered what his grandpa would say if he knew his grandson’s hands were calloused from work, that his hands new the weight of metal and the stain of oil. Would he be proud? 

Then, he wondered what he would say that his hands knew how to only love a man. 

Billy uncapped a crystal bottle of old bourbon that was left on top of a shelf, whipped the rim and took a swig directly from it, down the hatch quick and easy. Alcohol: the family vice, he snorted. He guesses that it doesn’t matter, the old man’s dead and buried anyway. 

So, every weekend, he rides up the unmarked roads to slowly fix the abandoned wreck until it stood grand and nobel once more. And every weekend he drinks. Maybe it’s that constant state of buzzed that has him failing to notice the imprint of bare feel leaving their mark of dirt and mud on the wooden floors made by feet that are not his own. Or how there are smudged fingerprints along the shelf he didn't bother to the dust off. Or that for however much to turn the lock on the back door, the old jammed thing would actual click to lock the door shut.

It’s really only when he starts to fill the cabin with his own things, a boombox in the living space and food in the cupboards, making the place _his_, does he realize that someone’s been going through his stuff. Because he can always tell when someone’s been going through his stuff. He’s lived with a younger obnoxious step-sister for years and has finely harnessed that skill.

So, really, who’s been eating his Pop Tarts.


End file.
